Broadband Integrated Services over Proposed Open CPE Architecture

Abstract

Over the decades, due to technology limitations and regulatory restrictions, information services have been delivered to subscribers through multiple service providers. In recent years, however, the advancement of digital communication technology, the passing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act in the U.S., and the emergence of the Internet are driving network convergence. As a result, the industry is calling for the consolidation of an integrated Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) in the customer’s premises to provide integrated services, such as multi-media, voice, and data services. However, the ever-changing network standards and competing technologies not only confuse carriers, but also prevent them from committing to massive CPE deployment. In this paper, the problems carriers face in the deployment of integrated services over broadband are first described. In order to remove these deployment obstacles, and also to create new value-added services, service models are investigated and an open CPE architecture is proposed that will support the wide range of broadband access technologies and ever-changing network standards.